Gears of War 3

I wasn't sure whether to put this in the Xbox 360 category to start with due to news item on IGN from Sept 09 stating:

The wait for Gears of War 3 could be longer than expected, with Epic Games President Mike Capps saying it will be released on the next generation of consoles – meaning that it could be between four to five years until we see Marcus Fenix and company again.

With huge game sales comes the inevitable sequel, so there's no real surprise that the latest rumour to come out of videogame magazine EGM is that the third instalment in the Gears of War series is currently in development.

The magazine claims that Gears of War 3 has an estimated release date of 2010, which would put each of the titles two years apart and once again it will see the return of the game's hero, Marcus Fenix.

It's not so much that I have a problem with Gears - in fact at the time I loved them, I'd just like something new (and preferably not Natal-based which sadly is where I imagine MS will take the most risks with new titles).

To be fair to baz, he's not pointing out minor details. Things like broken network code would be translated to "fucked up multiplayer" and pop-in textures to "textures appearing 2 minutes after the level loaded". They're fairly noticeable things.

I like Horde mode and the campaign in 2 was alright (bit poor in 1), I don't have a problem with a Gears 3 but it's not on my 'most anticipated' list.

seasidebaz wrote:
I bought the first one on launch and was sorely disappointed. The game was broken. Bought the sequel for about a tenner and had a great time with it. The game was still broken though.

In summary, the games are great tech demos and therefore are worth about a tenner. I wouldn't pay full price for them though.

This is my point. I didn't notice one single thing 'broken' about either of them. Just great story, graphics, music, voice acting/script and most importantly fun.

They were good games but Gears 2 was borked online for ages. It took too long for a patch to be released so I ended up getting rid of it thinking it'd never be solved. You'd just sit there waiting for it to find a match, which it never did. I even played recently and it still takes a while to find and join a match. However, once ina game it's a lot of fun and the netcode seems sound.

As for the textures, that was an early issue with the Unreal 3 engine that was mostly fixed for Gears 2. It helps if you rip the game to the HDD.

It's the 3rd game in a series. It's hardly being dragged out either. Some people like a story or setting to last, not to just have every game a one shot product that they invest time in and never see again.

the Gears series has far better multiplayer mechanics than any other FPS out their, shame the rather shitty matchmaking system and bugs switch a lot of people back to Modern Warfare.

Underwater.. I always associate underwater levels with frustrating 'air' time limits and moving at an infuriating snails pace. My gut feeling is that they'll be using changing water levels to spice up the cover mechanics, it sounds like they don't want anymore hiding behind walls for 5 minutes stand-off's which I'd welcome. Having lava changing safe spots and so forth.

I wouldn't read too much into the foliage tech, they had the 'meat cube' tech announced seemingly in time for the previous game which never really made much use for it.

The design team dislike the shotgun with a passion, supposidly they got pissed that it was being used as a 'staple' weapon in multiplayer when the game was supposed to be about ducking in and out of cover with the rifle. It's also been the cause of various technical issues with the net code due to it's scatter fire (which is why you don't get it in a lot of games these days).

It's why in 2 they tried to introduce the alternative pistols/rifles to tone down shotgun usage.